Goodnight Nobody (30 page)

Thirty-Nine

I hadn't spent more than ten minutes in Delphine Dolan's nine a.m. Monday morning Pilates mat class before I knew that I was going to die there. Judging from the panting and wheezing beside me, my best friend was going to die right along with me.

"Toes pointed, fingertips straight, please, squeeze ze core, head up, and one! Two! Three!"

"How many do we do?" I grunted at Marybeth Coe, who was on her back beside me.

"A hundred," she said serenely. I couldn't help but notice that she wasn't panting or sweating or turning purple and looking like she wanted to die. She just had a nice healthy glow. "That's the name of the exercise. The hundred."

"Nine! Ten! Eleven!"

My midsection was on fire as I fluttered my arms up and down. I'd never felt pain like this. Not even during labor with Sophie. Not even the first time I'd coughed after my C-section with the twins.

"Eighteen! Nineteen! Twenty!"

Delphine Dolan stalked up and down the rows of supine women, clad in a black capri-length catsuit so tight that I thought if I stared hard enough I'd be able to see her tattoo. A complicated arrangement of straps stretched across her taut shoulders and tanned, lean back, leaving her slender arms bare. Her shiny brown hair was in a French twist, of course, and not one drop of sweat had made its way through her foundation. The nails of her long, prehensile toes were painted pale pink, and a thick circle of diamonds glittered on her ring finger. She'd come a long way since Hackensack.

"Thirty-one! Thirty-two! Thirty-three!"

"Merde,"
Janie gasped, shooting me a look that let me know I'd pay for dragging her out of Manhattan to the workout from hell.

"Forty-six! Forty-seven! Forty-eight!"

My plan had been to take one class, then corner Delphine in the parking lot or the locker room and ask her some questions about Kitty. Clearly, that plan needed revising. After class, assuming I survived that long, I wouldn't be in a position to corner anyone. I'd probably have to be carried out on a stretcher.

"Sixty-three! Sixty-four! Sixty-five!"

I tried to distract myself by focusing on Sukie Sutherland's legs--long and lean, with perfectly pedicured toes. Where, I wondered, for the millionth time since I'd moved to Upchurch, where did these women find the time?

"Eight-eight! Eighty-nine! Ninety!"

Please, God,
I prayed as I pumped my arms.
Please don't let me die in a Pilates studio in Connecticut surrounded by women I can't stand.

"And...one hundred! Arms over head, deep inhale up, and slowly exhale, and sit up," Delphine commanded. We did, all fourteen of us. I noticed, with some dismay, that I was the only one who'd sweated through my sports bra. "Arms over head again, deep breaths..." I stretched and breathed, then reached forward, as Janie pushed herself onto her hands and knees. She hung there for a moment, wavering, then collapsed back down on the mat.

"C'est fini?"
she whispered.

"I think so," I whispered back. Sukie Sutherland shot us a dirty look. I pretended not to notice as we stretched. "You okay?"

Janie nodded, although she looked a little green. Delphine sashayed across the room, long legs pumping, bent over, giving us all a view of her admirable ass, and punched a button on the CD player. As the soothing strains of Enya filled the room, she dimmed the lights, bade us
"Au revoir,"
and exited through the door to the locker room.

I pushed myself to my feet. My arms felt like overcooked spaghetti; my legs felt like Jell-O, and my midriff ached so profoundly that I found myself taking shallow breaths to avoid the agony of a full-on inhalation. "Janie!" I hissed.

She was flopped forward, belly-down on her mat. "Can't...move," she said weakly. "You...go on...without me. Needs...of the many...outweigh...needs...of the few."

"For God's sake," I whispered, grabbing her hands and yanking her onto her feet, a move I was certain hurt me more than it hurt her.

We pushed through the swinging door that led to the mauve and pink locker room. Delphine Dolan was standing in front of the row of sinks and the floor-to-ceiling mirror behind them, unpinning her hair. The catsuit lay in a tangled bundle at her feet. She was absolutely naked.

"'Allo, Kate!" she called cheerfully, as if we'd been out for a Sunday afternoon stroll, as if we were both fully clothed and she hadn't spent the last hour and fifteen minutes trying to kill me. " 'ow did you like the class?"

"It was something," I managed to say, trying desperately to avoid my own sweaty, sweatpanted reflection in the mirror. Delphine Dolan had the most perfect body I'd ever seen: creamy skin, perky breasts, a slender waist, thighs without a hint of a ripple or pucker, and pubic hair that was still waxed into a tiny landing strip. I had a moment's panic when I didn't see the little heart tattoo I'd noticed on the pages of
Eager Beaver,
but then I saw that in the place where it had been in the picture was a patch of poreless, shiny skin. She'd probably had it lasered away. Maybe around the time she decided to be French. "Do you have a minute? There's something I wanted to ask you about."

"What's that?"

"Kitty Cavanaugh," I said. "It'll only take a few minutes."

"A few minutes"--Delphine favored me with a kindly smile, perhaps because my face was still the color of an eggplant--"
alors,
I do not have." She looked pointedly at the clock above the changing room door. "I must meet Kevin for
le brunch.
"

Le brunch.
Okay. There was laying it on thick, and then there was laying it on with a trowel.

"Maybe some ozzer time?" Delphine said, charming smile still in place.

"Maybe now," said Janie. "Debbie."

Delphine's smile wobbled.
"Pardon?"
she said, tilting her head at what she probably thought was an inquisitive and charming angle. I saw her eyes flick toward the door. She was probably trying to make sure that we were still alone in the locker room and nobody had heard what Janie had just called her.

"Debbie Farber," Janie recited, snapping the straps of her black and purple scoop-neck shirt that matched her purple and black yoga pants. "Born nineteen seventy-two in Hackensack, New Jersey. Dropped out of high school at fifteen. First arrested at sixteen. Shoplifting, grand theft auto, assault with a deadly weapon, loitering for the purposes of prostitution."

"It was my mother's car!" Delphine muttered, and there wasn't a trace of Paris in her accent. It was now juiciest New Jersey. "She just reported it missing because her new husband hated my guts! And I wasn't a prostitute!" She lifted her head and glared at us, and when she spoke it was with enormous, if slightly misplaced, dignity. "I was an
escort.
"

Janie's snort reverberated throughout the locker room. I elbowed her, then said, "We don't care about that. We just want to talk to you about Kitty. You knew her."

Delphine clasped her hands in front of her breasts as if she'd just realized that she was naked.

"Come with us," said Janie. "Quick cup of coffee. Won't take a minute."

Delphine raised her head. Displeasure had twisted her fine features into an ugly mask. "And what if I won't?"

"Then," Janie said, "we'll tell a few of your clients with little asses and big mouths what your real name is, and what you used to do for a living. Maybe they'll be a little more impressed than we are with the distinction between 'prostitute' and 'escort.' " She handed Delphine her cell phone. "Call your husband and tell him you're going to be late for
le brunch.
"

"Look," said Delphine twenty minutes later, slender forearms folded on an orange plastic table. She'd refused to go anywhere in Upchurch, had nixed Greenwich and turned Darien down flat, so we were sitting in a booth at a McDonald's in Lakeville, just off I-84. I'd treated myself to a hot apple pie. Janie had ordered a Big Mac and fries. Delphine had declined coffee, tea, bottled water, and a sip of the eggnog-flavored milkshake I'd bought to go with my pie and was sitting with nothing in front of her except for a paper napkin.

"Kitty got in touch with me regarding one of my clients back in New York," she said.

"Who?" Janie and I asked at the same time.

Delphine shook her head. "Doesn't matter. He wasn't who she was looking for, and he had a stroke five years ago. He's not your guy. You know about..." She let her voice trail off.

I nodded. "Bonnie told me."

"Bonnie," Delphine said. Her eyes were clear underneath the mascara and her voice without its French accent was pleasant and low. "She was nice. Kitty and I went up there for Thanksgiving once, when we both lived in New York." She wrapped her hands around her elbows. "I used to tell her that I had a father and believe me, he was no picnic. But she couldn't stop looking. For her, it was like"--she pulled two fresh napkins from the dispenser and started shredding them--"a compulsion. Like she couldn't help herself."

"So how did the two of you wind up here?" I asked.

"We were friends in the city," Delphine said. "We'd go to the gym together, and we'd go out after for a coffee or a smoothie, and we'd talk. She was nice."

Delphine's face was drawn as she spun her diamond ring around her finger.

"I tried to help her," she said, lowering her eyes. "Sometimes in...in my line of work I'd come across the name of a man Kitty was interested in, and I'd set up a meeting. She'd help me out too. She helped me get health insurance, and when I got in"--she toyed with a tendril of glossy hair, then with the strap of her catsuit--"in some trouble once, she helped take care of it. She said girls like us needed to look out for each other."

"Girls like us?" I repeated.

Delphine nodded as her slender fingers worked at the napkins, tearing them into confetti. "You know. Girls who were alone in the world."

"So you met each other in New York," I prompted.

"And then she met Philip through his father. She had to interview him for some piece she was researching about reforms in insurance law. She and Philip got married, and they introduced me to Kevin." A genuine smile played around her lips for an instant at the thought of her husband. "I went for speech classes and everything so I'd sound--you know. Like I fit in here. But I didn't do so well at them, so..." She shrugged. "Now I'm French!"

"How nice for you," said Janie.

I glared at her as Delphine lifted her index finger to her mouth and started nibbling at the nail, looking all of sixteen. "I should have done better by her. I told her she was too good for him, but she didn't want to hear it."

"Why?" asked Janie. "Why was she too good for him?"

"Because he cheated on her constantly," said Delphine. "Cheated on her. Lied to her. Slept with anything with a pulse while she supported them. He..." She lowered her eyes, and I took a guess.

"He hit on you?"

"On everyone," she said in a flat voice. "And she wouldn't leave. She said her girls deserved two parents who loved them and lived together, and that no matter what happened, she wouldn't leave. I told her he was making a fool of her. I said that instead of wasting her time chasing after some father who obviously didn't want to be found she should have been paying attention to her husband and her girls. After that..." Delphine pressed the pads of her fingertips against the delicate skin beneath her eyes. "Things were never right between us after that." She patted her eyes and looked down at the shredded remains of her napkin. "I pray for her," she said. "Every night. I pray that before she died, she found what she was looking for."

"Well, that was a whole load of nothing," I complained, as soon as Janie and I had dropped Delphine off at her studio and were alone in the car again.

"Au contraire, ma soeur,"
said Janie. "For one thing, it's always interesting to spend time with a working girl. For another, she gave us a major clue." She grinned at me, pulled into the Brookfield Bagels parking lot, and whipped out her cell phone.

"What?" I demanded. "What clue?"

" 'Some piece about insurance law,' " Janie quoted. "Please. Even
Content,
which is Sominex on a page, wouldn't print anything that dull. What was the name of Kitty's husband's business?" When I told her she punched in the number for information. "Yes, in Connecticut a listing for Upchurch Marine Insurance?" She paused as she was connected, then told the receptionist, "Hi, I'm calling for Philip Cavanaugh?" She paused, then spoke once more. "Senior," she said.

My entire body broke out in goose bumps. "You think maybe Philip's father..."

Janie held up one finger for silence. "Hello, my name is Janie Segal of the carpet Segals. Do you insure dinghies?

"Oh Lord," I groaned.

"As soon as possible," Janie said crisply. "Yes, three o'clock will be fine. I'll see you then." She hung up the phone and I stared at her with my mouth hanging open.

"Do you think that maybe he was
her
father too? Do you think that she and Philip...oh, my God."

"It's extremely
Flowers in the Attic,
" Janie said. She applied lipstick, then smacked her lips together and flipped the mirror shut.

I sank back into the passenger's seat. "Oh...my...God."

"Buck up, little camper," said Janie, swinging out of the parking lot. "I'm making us an appointment, and we're going in."

"So!" said Philip Cavanaugh Senior, settling his bulk behind his burled walnut desk three hours later and smiling at us with teeth so white and even that they could only be dentures. His face was a preview of coming attractions, a glimpse at what his son would look like thirty years down the road--the blue eyes rheumy and bloodshot, the hint of a gut blossomed into actuality, and sagging jowls flushed with broken capillaries. His suit was expensive but threadbare; one of the shoelaces on his worn black wingtips had broken and been tied into a knot. "You're having..." He pulled on half-moon spectacles and peered down at the form Janie had filled out. He'd missed a spot shaving that morning; there was a strip of gray stubble on his chin. "A dinghy insurance emergency?"